For those looking to dine out in New York, it seems like the difficulty of obtaining a reservation has reached unprecedented heights. In the last three years, the process of getting a seat at the city’s trendiest tables has gone from challenging to out-of-reach for many would-be foodies.
“There are some restaurants that people can’t get into,” Joel Montaniel, the CEO of bookings platform Sevenrooms, recently told Bloomberg. “I’ve even talked to restaurateurs, we’ve hosted them on panels and asked them for tips to get in, and they say, ‘I don’t have them.’”
Dinner reservations have become so competitive that last month the New York state legislature voted to ban third-party bookings sites like Appointment Trader, where users were scalping their restaurant slots for $200 or more – in a manner that was once reserved for concerts and sporting events.
Melissa Fleischut, the President & CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association, described the legislation as a “major victory for the hospitality industry” that would reduce competition for reservations and protect restaurants from expensive cancellations.
Even with legislative changes, however, the reality remains that in recent years, the desire for exciting, trendy and luxurious activities continues to outstrip their availability.
“Post-COVID, I’m sure you’ve noticed that everything is booked up, right? Every plane is full, every restaurant is full, every hotel is full,” says travel advisor Jaclyn Sienna India. “So how do you navigate getting people into restaurants, hotels and yachts and experiences that are sort of already booked up?”
India knows more about getting people into restaurants than most – for 16 years she has run Sienna Charles, a concierge and travel planning service for the ultra-wealthy. Her expertise is reserved for families making in excess of $100 million and her past clients include George W. Bush and Mariah Carey.
Despite her star-studded resume, however, India emphasizes that access to the most exciting and popular restaurants (or hotels or yachts or other luxury experiences) comes down to a few significant factors: namely, understanding what customers are looking for and building relationships with the restaurants that can fulfill those desires.
“People have really moved away from fine dining, we very rarely have a client that wants to sit through a tasting menu,” she explains. “The entire shift in the last three years has been towards trendy restaurants where the focus is not necessarily on food. It’s never about food, it’s sort of about FOMO. It’s about saying that you got in, it’s a bragging right.”
If you’re interested in bragging rights of your own (and are willing to be persistent about fighting for a reservation) read on to see which New York restaurant tables are the hardest-to-get, according to Sienna Charles.
